LAKE ELSINORE 
Tuesday was another night at the office for Storm ace Matthew Wisler.

Wisler continued his mastery of the California League by throwing six shutout innings of two-hit ball in the Storm’s 7-3 win over High Desert at The Diamond.

The outing lowered Wisler’s ERA to a league-best 1.04.

Wisler was so efficient, with only 62 pitches through five innings, that he pitched through the sixth for the first time this season. He finished with 75 pitches, 54 for strikes.

Wisler did not walk a batter for the second time this season while registering a modest total of strikeouts by his standards — four.

“He is not afraid to go out there and go, ‘Here it is; you hit it. This is my best stuff,’” Storm manager Shawn Wooten said. “That goes a long way, the competitiveness of it all. There’s a lot of guys in this game that have good stuff, but they pitch around contact.”

Wisler generated nine of his 14 outs in play via ground balls.

“He’s got some good sink when he throws his two-seamer,” Storm catcher Austin Hedges said of Wisler’s contrasting styles between power and finesse. “He can pump up, get to 95-96 with his four-seam, too.”

Seven of Wisler’s pitches missed the Mavericks’ bats completely, including an 83-mph slider that fanned High Desert’s Chris Taylor for the third out in sixth inning.

But for the most part, Wisler was able to breeze through the Mavericks’ lineup by using only two of his four pitches — his fastball and slider.

“I threw one curveball tonight,” Wisler said. “I actually didn’t throw any change-ups because they only had a couple lefties.”

Squirrel race goes national

In its second year, the squirrel race has become a popular sideshow between innings at Storm games.

Eric Theiss, who works in group sales for the Storm, dons a squirrel outfit and races a random fan from the right-field line to the left-field line. Theiss — a former 400-meter sprinter at SUNY-Oneonta, a state university in New York — allows the fan to get a sizeable lead before he even starts running. Theiss eventually catches up and wins handily. He has lost only once in two years.

Members of the Padres’ front office witnessed the races during trips to The Diamond and invited Theiss to perform the same squirrel race at Petco Park last Saturday.

The squirrel race at Petco was so amusing that it was shown on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” that night, and a YouTube video of it had attracted more than 100,000 views by Tuesday morning.

“I’m from New York, so I know it’s kind of made its way back home,” Theiss said. “A lot of friends have been texting me. For the most part, it’s been a surreal thing. I try to stay humble about it.”